I was attempting to use the guide Alsa Multi-channel Audio mini-HOWTO to change my stereo sound to 5.1 channel surround sound. The 1st step mentioned is to edit ~/.asoundrc file.
When I command line gedit ~/.soundrc I get an error gedit ~/.asoundrc
Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server
Xlib: No protocol specified

cannot open display: (null)
Run 'gedit --help' to see a full list of available command line options.